American Airlines Completes Transition to Paperless Cockpits

By Woodrow Bellamy III

American Airlines has replaced its paper flight manuals with electronic flight bags and discontinued paper revisions to terminal flight charts.

The airline completed testing of its iPad EFB in April, and has been granted approval from FAA to use EFBs during all phases of flight on all of its current fleet of aircraft. The conversion is estimated to save American $1.2 million annually by reducing fuel burn by 400,000 gallons per year due to the reduction in weight by eliminating the paper manuals, which are typically more than 3,000 papges long.

American pilots use an EFB equipped with Jeppesen's mobile terminal chart applications.

"Additionally, each of the more than 8,000 iPads we have deployed to date replaces more than 3,000 pages of paper previously carried by every active pilot and instructor. Altogether, 24 million pages of paper documents have been eliminated," said David Campbell, vice president of safety and operations performance at American.

In July, pilots on the airline's regional subsidiary--American Eagle Airlines--will begin using the iPad-based EFB, making it the first regional carrier to convert to EFBs.